A Henson trust, named after an Ontario court decision from the 1980s, is an estate planning tool by which property can be held in trust for a disabled beneficiary such that it is not an asset of the beneficiary, thereby preserving and maximizing the beneficiary’s entitlement to government means-tested social programs. It is frequently employed by parents of disabled children.

In S.A. v. Metro Vancouver Housing Corp, released 25 January 2019, the Supreme Court of Canada gave full consideration to Henson trusts. It confirmed the Henson trust as an important estate planning tool in Canada.

The appellant S.A. lived in . . . [more]

The process of digitizing the legal system in Ontario has been fraught with challenges and setbacks.

In 2011, Precedent Magazine detailed some of the efforts to modernize legal records, with the Integrated Justice Project dating as far back to 1996, intending to create a centralized online electronic filing and case management system. These unsuccessful efforts cost taxpayers an untold millions of dollars, without anything significant achieved.

For anyone working in the legal system in Ontario, the lack of technology has added additional cost to the public through unnecessary use of paper and countless delays due to an archaic system. It’s . . . [more]

Every week we present the summary of a decision handed down by a Québec court provided to us by SOQUIJ and considered to be of interest to our readers throughout Canada. SOQUIJ is attached to the Québec Department of Justice and collects, analyzes, enriches, and disseminates legal information in Québec.

PÉNAL (DROIT) : L’appel est rejeté à l’égard de déclarations de culpabilité sous des chefs d’agressions sexuelles et de voies de fait à l’endroit de 4 travailleuses du sexe entre 2002 et 2005; la technique policière utilisée pour obtenir un échantillon de l’ADN de l’appelant n’était pas objectivement condamnable et . . . [more]

The Canadian Research Institute for Law and the Family closed its doors on 31 August 2018, largely as a result of its inability to make up the shortfall in its revenues from sources other than its primary funder, the Alberta Law Foundation. This reduced the number of national organizations conducting original social science and legal research on the impact of laws on Canadian families from one to none.

Perhaps as a result, noted lawyers Melanie Del Rizzo and Wayne Barkauskas, the current and former chairs of the Canadian Bar Association’s national family law section respectively, have tabled a resolution for . . . [more]

Each Friday, we share the latest job listings from Slaw Jobs, which features employment opportunities from across the country. Find out more about these positions by following the links below, or learn how you can use Slaw Jobs to gain valuable exposure for your job ads, while supporting the great Canadian legal commentary at Slaw.ca.

Current postings on Slaw Jobs (newest first):

• Content Editors – Employment and labour law subject matter experts (Contract Role) | Concord, ON
  (First Reference Inc)
• Policy Counsel (Contract Role) | Ottawa, ON
  (Federation of Law Societies of Canada)
• Associate Lawyer, Class Actions (Full-time) | London,

Depuis quelques années, certains historiens et citoyens ont commencé à utiliser des concepts contemporains pour qualifier le Grand Dérangement. C’est une idée qui apparaît notamment dans les travaux de John Mack Faragher et selon laquelle l’expulsion de la population acadienne (la majorité d’une population de 14 000 personnes), de 1755 à 1764, par les autorités coloniales britanniques de la Nouvelle-Écosse – appuyées par le gouverneur William Shirley du Massachusetts, au nom du roi George II de Grande-Bretagne –, vers les colonies britanniques de l’Amérique du Nord, puis vers l’Angleterre et la France (soit la Déportation des Acadiens ou le Grand . . . [more]

Suppose you have practiced law for many years in the same community. You are shown a list of other lawyers who do the same sort of work as you, in the same area. You probably have an opinion about most of the names on the list. Favourable or unfavourable impressions will have accumulated from your interactions with them on files, your observations of their work, and other colleagues’ comments to you about them.

Of course, they also have opinions about you. Your collegial reputation is the sum of the opinions about you held by others in your community of practice. . . . [more]

Each Wednesday we tell you which three English-language cases and which French-language case have been the most viewed* on CanLII and we give you a small sense of what the cases are about.

For this last week:

1. Dentons Canada LLP v. Trisura Guarantee Insurance Company, 2018 ONSC 7311

[5] The dispute arises from an insurance claim submitted by the applicant, Dentons, to Trisura on April 10, 2017. The insurance claim arises out of an alleged social engineering fraud, in which Dentons asserts that one of its lawyers was duped into transferring over $2.5 million in funds belonging to . . . [more]

There has been a lot of consternation over artificial intelligence, and rightly so. The technology will be disruptive in many ways, and there are ethical issues to be solved. Embedded bias for example. The form of AI called machine learning learns by looking at large data sets of information. That could be how to play a game, who to hire, or even who to convict.

If the data set has bias in it, the AI will learn and propagate that bias. This problem has led to unexpected results which may or may not be obvious.

In some ways this is . . . [more]

As 2018 ended and 2019 began many of us made New Year resolutions. Resolutions are typically about making a change to an undesired behavior or to accomplish a personal goal. The goal is not always directly to improve ourselves (eat better, go to the gym more, spend less) but could be about how we treat others or how we do business. One year I made a resolution to stop drinking craft beer because the big brewers were having a hard time. That one didn’t last very longJ.

By the time you read this, many New Year resolutions will have failed. . . . [more]

In the documentary “Surviving R. Kelly”, R. Kelly’s alleged patterns of manipulation and abuse are exposed. R. Kelly begins most of his abusive relationships by promising young girls mentorship and access to music deals. This “mentorship” quickly turns sexual. He then increasingly violates young women’s boundaries. The ones that don’t turn away, he deems fit to move in with him.

Once they are in his home, they become prisoners. Often isolated and locked in rooms without access to a toilet or food for days. When the women are allowed out, they must obey him or be beaten.

Survivors described their . . . [more]

Here are excerpts from the most recent tips on SlawTips, the site that each week offers up useful advice, short and to the point, on practice, research, writing and technology.

Research & Writing

Yet More Bad Business Jargon
Neil Guthrie

Baked in: This is (regrettably) now used to mean something like integral. Does it have its origin in that vacuous remark by the sometime MP Belinda Stronach about baking ‘a bigger economic pie’ (whatever that was intended to mean)? I don’t know, but please stop talking about things being baked in; you’re a lawyer, not a baker. …

Practice . . . [more]